McLean shivered in his summer suit, still cold from no breakfast, too little sleep and a rude awakening with news he could have done without

They reached her door after a couple of hundred yards. Emma fished around in her bag for a set of keys. “You want to come in for a coffee?” He was tempted, sorely. She was warm and friendly, she smelled of carefree days and fun. For the whole evening she had chased away his ghosts, but now they were back.

If she’d lived in any other street, he might have said yes.

“I can’t.” He made a show of looking at his watch. “I’ve got to get back. It’s been a long day today, and it looks like tomorrow’s going to be even worse.”

“Liar, you’re supposed to be on leave. You can sleep in as late as you like. You’ve no idea how much I envy you.”

Emma punched him playfully on the chest. “But it’s all right. I’ve got to be in the lab for eight. This was fun, though.”

“Yeah, it was. We should do it again.”

“Is that a date, Inspector McLean?”

“Ah, I don’t know about that. If it was a date, I’d have to cook for you.”

“Fine. I’ll bring the wine.” Emma stepped close to him, leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips, backing away and darting up the steps before he had time to react.

“Night, Tony,” she shouted as she unlocked the door and disappeared inside.

It wasn’t until he was halfway back to Princes Street that McLean realised he hadn’t thought about Constable Kydd all evening.

Harsh

A harsh buzzing sound filtered in from the edges of his dreams, bringing McLean back to the land of the living.

He opened an eye to stare at his bedside alarm. Six o’clock and he felt like death. It seemed rather unfair, after such a pleasant time the night before. And he’d been looking forward to that lie-in, too.

Reaching out, he hit the snooze button on the alarm. The buzzing continued and now he realised it was coming from the top of the chest of drawers on the other side of the room.

Stumbling out of bed, he reached his crumpled jacket just as the noise stopped.

Underneath it, plugged into its charger, his phone flashed a single text message for him to contact the station.

He was just about to call in when his home phone started to ring out in the hall.

Stomping out in his boxers, McLean reached the handset just as it too rang off.

He’d still not replaced the tape in the answering machine. Perhaps he’d go and buy a new one. Something digital that wouldn’t preserve the voices of the dead.

He looked down at the text message on the phone in his hand, hit the speed-dial number and asked to be put through.

Ten minutes later he was showered, dressed and out the front door. Breakfast would have to wait.

Rude awakening

A chill morning wind cut down the narrow street, sharpened by the tall buildings on either side.

Lazy wind, his gran would have called it; goes straight through you rather than making the effort to go round.

McLean shivered in his thin summer suit, still cold from no breakfast, too little sleep and a sudden, rude awakening with news he could have done without.

Sometimes the life of an office worker seemed very attractive indeed; shift end and knock off.

Go home safe in the knowledge that no one was going to call in the middle of the night asking you to come in and process a few more reports, or whatever it was people in offices with normal jobs did.

Detective Constable MacBride was waiting for him at the entrance to the city mortuary.

He was nervously loitering in the street like some fresh-faced first-year student wondering if he had the nerve to go alone into one of the Cowgate’s more notorious pubs.

He looked even colder than McLean felt, if that was possible.

“What’s the story, constable,” McLean asked, flashing his warrant card to a young uniform carefully rolling out black and yellow tape around the vehicle entranceway.

“It’s the young girl, sir. The one from the house in Sighthill. She . . . Well, I think you’d be better off talking to Dr Sharp.”

Inside the building it was unusually busy. A SOC team were dusting everything in their search for fingerprints and other clues, watched by a nervous pathology assistant.

“What’s happening, Tracy?” McLean asked. She looked relieved to see him, a familiar face in the chaos.

“Someone broke in here and stole one of our bodies. The mutilated girl. They took her preserved organs, too.”

“Anything else gone?”

“Gone, no. But they’ve been at the computers. We’ve got password protection, but when I came in mine was switched on.

“I could have sworn I turned it off last night. Didn’t think much of it until we noticed the body gone. Nothing’s been deleted as far as I can tell, but they could have made copies of any of my files.”

“And the other bodies in storage?” McLean looked out through the glass panes that separated the office from the autopsy theatre.

Emma was popping away with her flashgun. Stopped when she saw him and gave a cheery wave.

“Don’t appear to have been touched. Whoever did this, they knew what they were looking for.”

“Chances are SOC won’t find anything, then. It looks like this has been very well planned. Are you sure it went last night?”

“I can’t be a hundred per cent. It’s not like we took her out every day to check. But the organs were stored in the secure room over there.”

Reinforced

She pointed to a heavy wooden door with a small reinforced glass window in it at head height.

“They were there last night when I put the suicide victim’s clothes away; gone this morning when I went to get another box of specimen jars.

“As soon as I noticed, I checked the drawers and she wasn’t there.”

“What time did you leave last night?”

“About eight, I think. But there’s someone here 24 hours a day. We never know when a body’s going to come in.”

“I’m assuming not just anyone can walk in off the street in here.” McLean knew already the security measures in place.

They weren’t perfect, but they had seemed more than adequate before now. Enough to stop people coming in without authorisation.

“How do you suppose someone would take a body out of here? I mean, you can’t exactly throw it over your shoulder and walk out on to the Cowgate.”

“Most bodies are brought here by ambulance or undertakers. Maybe they took her away that way?”

More tomorrow.